61 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-7-16”

  2. Looks like a cat eying something to pounce on Jo.

    Our power went off at 6:00 last night. Elvera went to bed about seven. I stayed up until nine. It was completely dark.
    At about 11:00 I woke with lights on, TV blaring. I had to go and turn everything off. I’m having to reset some clocks. Two of the electric clocks had back up batteries but it didn’t work. One gained 15 minutes. ?????

    We don’t have telephone when the power is off!
    I tried to call Duke Pwr to report. But I didn’t have a phone.
    So? I tried it on my cell phone. But my cell phone still operates on the 828 area code and thinks I’m in Hendersonville.
    I’m not going to change anything. Doesn’t matter.

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  3. Good morning & good evening & good all around!

    Looks like DJ has a panther stalking coyotes. It might work, DJ.

    A DJ is thought of as a disc jockey. Is a career change around the corner?
    Maybe you could do a talk show about coyotes in LA.

    I have a women’s meeting in a little while. It has been a too busy time lately. Anyone remember Toobizy? I am living up to it right now.

    My back has some kinks from all the recent yard woark. The lawn is overgrown and ready to help me work the kinks out. Yeah, right.

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  5. We had rain all night. I am helping the grands get off to school. We have already had the great shoe hunt. 3 are already on the bus. This is the last super busy week of summer for my daughter. Her 2nd job at the track finished on Monday, and she had 2 extra shifts this week at her regular job.

    My paying job has slowed down, just as things speed up at home. I have a box of peaches, pears, a bucket of cucumbers, apples, and a friend is bringing me 2 boxes of tomatoes and a bag of green chile. I need to get them all put up before next Tuesday. We are tentatively planning to butcher the hog this weekend. Meanwhile, my only helper is a 4 year old. 🙂 But he is a great helper. Nothing ripe in the garden gets overlooked with him on the job.

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  8. The photo shows what is a vacant lot across the street from my house — it slides down into a long canyon/ravine (where the vegetation is), one of several that cut across our town and through neighborhoods (this one runs right next to my neighbor’s house and on up to the park where I walk the dogs).

    Anyway, I digress.

    Coyotes?

    Pedestal sinks? Focus.

    I’ve heard coyotes yipping in the part of the ravine that is across the street (where the cat is) and coyotes a couple months ago were photographed lounging on the vacant lot and trotting down the sidewalk, slipping down into the canyon.

    So …

    A couple weeks ago I loading up the Jeep with something in front of my house when the movement of an animal over there caught my eye. At first I thought it was a coyote. But as I walked across the street I saw it was the feral cat that kind of is attached to the house near there that recently sold (new owners said cat seemed to come with the house, they feed it, it sleeps on their roof).

    I’ve seen the cat there several times since and can’t imagine how he’s avoided being a coyote dinner. But maybe that particular pack of coyotes has moved on to another section of the canyon, it’s a long, wild place filled with all kinds of wildlife, I’m sure. I would have loved living here as a kid with a place like that to explore.

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  9. A Rant!

    The kitchen disposal was working yesterday.
    Last night the power went off. Now the disposal doesn’t work.
    I can’t find a reset button. I don’t know what’s wrong. It wasn’t running when the power went off. I don’t see a connection.
    But suddenly, the disposal doesn’t work.

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  10. Garbage disposals are more trouble than they’re worth, in my opinion. I gave up fixing mine (again) some years ago when it went out. It’s one kitchen technology design that is in dire need of an upgrade.

    Chas, for what it’s worth, I’ve used my cell phone during outages to go online and look up outages in my area (and it usually has the phone number to call there, too). It at least tells you there’s an outage (yes, we knew that) — but also sometimes it’ll say the cause (if they know) and how much longer before power is restored.

    And of course you’ll find out the real scoop from all your neighbors who are chattering away on Facebook and Nextdoor. 🙂

    “My power is out.”

    “Mine is out too, does anyone know when it’s coming on?”

    “I called the city and they said …”

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  11. The canyon must travel under the street because it picks up again on our side — my neighbor’s backyard is next to it and they do get a lot of wildlife coming up into their yard (they have a koi pond that’s pretty attractive for water). So I’m guessing they’ve had a coyote or two visiting in the night as well. Way too close to my backyard, which is right over the next fence.

    Did you know coyotes can get over 7-foot-tall fences? Wildlife officials say fences should be 8 feet tall now.

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  13. Saw this on FB. Someone had asked a question about losing someone they loved and this was the answer someone else gave them. It was on reddit.

    Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.
    I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.
    As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
    In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
    Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
    Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

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  14. I played in a canyon like the one across from Donna, as a child. They were fun places and I never once considered a coyote or–worse–a wolf might get me. We did have hoboes from time to time, but when we saw strange men in the canyon, we scrammed for home and peered out the windows–never seeing them again.

    (This was behind 7th Street School, Donna. They put in a storm drain for runoff from Western when I was about 10 and those great days disappeared).

    My husband (a mile from Miraleste) grew up in even deeper and wilder canyons., miles in length and tells many stories of a fun childhood. Kids just aren’t allowed to roam like that anymore–I wouldn’t have let mine.

    But, we did own a house in Kitsap County (which we visited last week), on an acre of land in a clearing of trees. It had a creek running through the property and shaggy cedars. We cleared a large area for football, I planted a garden and they could run wild for four glorious years.

    4 safer acres in Ukiah, same thing. But they’ve been stuck in suburbia ever since. Nothing like what my husband and I both had–living in suburbia for me. No wonder kids are so out of touch with nature and in touch with their screens.

    Off to dance!

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  15. I still remember one of the first deaths I experienced (I was probably a young teen).

    We were in Iowa on vacation and were just wrapping up our trip, set to drive back to California the next day, when we learned that my dad’s brother (my uncle, a farmer in a nearby town) had just dropped over dead. My parents and I had spent the day and evening out at the lake resort and found the note from my grandmother when we got home to her house (which was where we were staying).

    Anyway, we extended our stay, of course, for the funeral (the first I remembered attending).

    I still remember so vividly waking up the next morning after he’d died, looking out the back door at my grandmothers — at what was a very normal sight to me, some of the neighbor kids walking along the dirt path next to the railroad track, the laundry swaying on the clothesline in the morning sun — and thinking how strange it was that someone was gone (really gone) and yet everything looked, well, the same.

    Loss is so hard and it rocks us every time. Death really is an enemy, it’s a truth we know in the deepest part of ourselves.

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  19. I know you won’t be able to believe it but I climbed trees, ran along branches, played in ditches and gullies, and drank from a garden hose. I also swam in creeks. I survived. I have broken a toe from running through the kitchen, sliding on a wet floor and having most of my foot go under the refrigerator while the pinky toe didn’t and I broke my collar bone from sitting down in a chair and bumping the wall. Otherwise I survived.
    Oh and I rode in cars with no seat belt and in the back of a pick up truck. I also played with a stick catching in on fire in the bonfire.

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  20. I had several childhood losses. By the time I was 14, I had lost a teacher, a Bible study teacher, a boy a year younger who was a friend of the family (suicide), and had attended a funeral for a whole family my brother knew who were killed in a crash of a small plane. Then when I was almost 17 my dad died and it felt like we lost our mom too in her numb grief.

    When Dad died, my oldest brother and his wife and baby son drove up right away–they might have come up overnight, might have waited till morning, I’m not sure, but it was only a two- or three-hour drive and I think they were there by morning, so my hunch is that they drove up as soon as they got the word. (Dad died around 10:00 at night.) My other brothers came, too, but I don’t remember the timing, and two of them had to come from other states. But in the morning someone suggested breakfast, or started cooking breakfast, and I remember feeling briefly that it was irreverent to eat breakfast when my father was dead, and immediately realizing it was impossible to never eat again; but that was my instant thought, that eating was improper with my father dead and in want of grieving.

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  24. My dad was cremated and his ashes spread in the Bay he loved. I regret I don’t have a “place” to put flowers and generally “visit” him. Funerals are terribly expensive these days. I would rather be cremated than waste all that money on a burial. With cremation chances are no one will wander across your grave, read your marker, and wonder about you.
    On the other hand, I believe my God is able to put the ashes back together just as if He would raise a body.
    Something to think about.

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  25. I used to think burial, then I changed to cremation, but this gives one pause once again. It is not that God cannot put us back together (think of those killed in fires or explosions or lost at sea or whatever) but what honors God. Hmmmmm…seems so much easier to be burned up….

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  26. Kim, I used to go down the street when dad would come home and ride back on the running board. My sister on the other side.
    Don’t tell me you remember running boards. I’ll know how old you are.
    The president’s guards used to ride on the running board rather than walk in the parades.
    Roosevelt’s guards did that.

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  28. Michelle, my parents said many of those things in regards to burial over cremation, which is why I’ve always expected that to be the method chosen for me.

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  30. What part of today I haven’t spent with you I have spent with DJ. I have all sorts of plans for her bathroom remodel. All those Realtor articles about storage solutions, remodels, and what to spend your money on plus my Ballard Design catalog addiction are finally paying off for someone.

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  32. Kim has provided all kinds of amazing ideas — and its kept me from further boring you all with my latest obsession

    I drank from the garden hose too. That was before the drought, of course, otherwise I would have also been fined (along with getting cancer or some such toxic thing)

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  33. I think when my friends and I played under the overpass bridge that it must have been a bit like being in a canyon. The banks going down to the train tracks were very steep. I can still hear, in my mind, the sound of vehicles going over that bridge while we were under it. We had collections of the nail spikes we found alongside the tracks. It seemed so adventuresome to spend hours under there waiting for the loud excitement of a passing train and getting to wave to passengers and watching for the red caboose to indicate that fun was over until next time.

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  36. Oh we called it a gully. When we would go “up in the country” somehow everyone knew we were there. There were no cell phones and the house didn’t have a land line…but they knew. They would bring their children and we would all run down the dirt road to the gully and THROW ROCKS AT EACH OTHER!!!!! Somehow we survived.

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  39. BG is having a birthday party on Sunday. Her dad and stepmother are hosting it. I am supplying the birthday cake. I am paying a traffic ticket for her for her birthday. 😉 Sarcastic Mommy strikes again. I think her father purchased her a new battery for her car today. Welcome to 19 Baby Girl–the presents suck.

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  40. We played down by the #@%$#& river.

    That’s what Mom used to call it after I came home bleeding and in need of stitches yet again, after being told not to go there. 🙂

    Those 4 times were about the only times I ever heard my Mom seriously cuss.

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  41. Writing an obituary today on a former fishing industry exec & atty who opened one of the town’s nicest waterfront restaurants in 1983. Burt Lancaster was there around that time and there’s a pic of him with the family (I did a story on the daughter who was the chef, as I recall); lots of 1980s TV shows filmed there.

    He was born in town in ’23, same year my house was built.

    I was covering a political speech at that restaurant in 1990 when I got word that my mom had had a heart attack and died. Still remember that so vividly. 😦

    Another reporter took over for me, but missed the big news which was announced before he took over, so the story turned out a little strange. But that was certainly the least of my worries.

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  42. Kim,

    Put the ticket receipt in a card instead of money. 🙂

    Maybe frame it, since she’ll wanna hold onto it as proof. Everything looks nicer in a dollar store frame. 🙂

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  43. Oh trust me AJ that is exactly what I plan to do. It would have been better if her dad had done it since she put her first ticket in his Father’s Day card last year, but he and I laughed that I would get retribution for him, so he felt he could pay for the battery. I will suggest he put the receipt for in in a card.

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  48. And just to prove Atlanta still has its share of strange people, I have a new story from a few minutes ago.

    I went to Kroger to pick up one of Art’ s many meds. I always get a small cart to get a few items that can be checked out from the pharmacy. I went to the car and unloaded. As I returned to the car from the buggy/cart stall, a black lady in a white SUV stopped and asked if she could ask me a question. I nodded. Then she said she was on her way to a shelter in Macon. She said she was not asking for money. Then she asked if I had anything that the two small children in the back seat could eat. I had just bought some Kroger brand Toasted Oats so I asked if they like Cheerios. She said yes. I went to get the cereal and thought she was driving around to where I parked. As I held up the Toasted Oats, she drove by and waved without stopping. Now I ask, was it the lack of top brand name, lack of sweetened cereal, or the fact that I gave her no money the turning point? If the children were truly hungry, wouldn’t she have taken the brand new unopened box of cereal? Isn’t it pitiful how adults will use children to con people?

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  52. My dad wanted to be cremated. We honored that request. I don’t want to be cremated, but won’t be around to really care all that much.

    Pity the poor children in the back seat. 😦

    Thanks for the chuckle, Kim. You might as well get something out of her getting a ticket. A chuckle is better than a good cry.

    It is a miracle any of us survived. 😉

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  54. The movie Janice mentioned is available on Netflix DVD, if anyone is interested. We have both Netflix streaming & DVD service. We thought of stopping the DVDs, but most of the movies or shows we have on our queue are only available on DVD. We don’t go to movies in the theater, & we rarely go out to eat, so having both Netflix services isn’t splurging overmuch. (And they’re not too expensive anyway.)

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  55. As for sinks, I’ll stick to the vanity-type (at least, that’s what I think they might be called), with the sink & “vanity” (counter) being one piece over a cabinet. We have so much stuff in that cabinet that would be inconvenient to have to fetch from another room. And I am not a dog. 🙂

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  56. St. Helena, CA was mentioned earlier. My cousin & his wife own That Pizza Place (yes, that’s the name of it) in St. Helena. 🙂

    (Tommy was New York born & bred, but went out to California many years ago for a fresh start in life. He’s doing well now. I think he still has his NY accent.)

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  57. I’ve gone back and forth on cremation. One preacher said it was of the devil. Another said “How will your body rie to meet the Lord in the air?” Either way, since I was born in 1957, I figure I have a few years left to decide.

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  60. I also heard that bummer lambs were when the ewe had triplets and could only feed two at a time so one needed bottle feeding.
    We had lots of fun bottle feeding those lambs. Though I refused to eat lamb later after they were butchered.

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  61. That is part of abandonment. She focuses on the two stronger or whichever appeal to her more and the third is left to its own devices. On the other hand, some of the moms can take on extras and that is pretty neat too. We see that in the deer population sometimes when the fawn of a mom killed by a car is picked up by another. I don’t know if it is a sister or aunt or just a passer by or friend of the doe.

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